Undiscovered Soul
by Team Free Will
Summary: Why is Sam so…disconnected, and how can it be fixed? - Warning: SPOILER ALERT – involves all of season 6  please see author's notes


**Title**: Undiscovered Soul  
**Authors**: Mikiya2200, ghost4

**Summary**: Why is Sam so…disconnected, and how can it be fixed?

**Warning: SPOILER ALERT – involves all of season 6 (please see author's notes)**  
**Rating**: M (one drop of the 'F' bomb)  
**Pairing:** No pairing  
**Disclaimer**: We don't own Supernatural, any of its characters, or and Impala '67 ( though I saw a two door at a car lot the other day, and I'm still debating…)  
**Word Count**: 1,250  
**Beta **by **Twinny **

**Author's Notes**: This is a little speculation piece about where the eventual story of Season 6 will go. It sort of starts mid-stream sometime in the boy's near future…probably around episode 10 or 11 of season 6, if you really want to try and place it in show time. This may have a second chapter. Not sure yet.

**Undiscovered Soul**

_We walk alone_  
_ just an undiscovered soul_  
_in the great unknown_  
_when your only hope_  
_is to find a home_

**Richie Sambora** – _Undiscovered Soul_

"Sam? Are you sure?"

The expression on Castiel's face was…concerned. That did not bode well for the person on the receiving end of that look. Sam knew it well. He'd seen how much pain it took to rouse the angel's sympathies first hand…and his pulse sped a bit as he answered honestly, "It has to be done, sure or not."

Dean's jaw tightened. "Come on. You're getting your soul back. This is good, right?"

Sam shared a heavy look with Castiel. Sure. Good.

On the other side of the desk Bobby cleared his throat, "I have the last incantation here. We use the first to pull your soul free of the Campbells, and the second drives it home. The whole thing shouldn't take long."

Shouldn't take long. Right. Not long to find the thing that should be the whole of him; the part that filled that empty, hollow, achingly cold hole inside him.

He was soulless.

He hadn't been surprised when Crowley had told them. To be perfectly honest, he'd known. He'd known something was gone from him for a long time now. Something had torn free of him when he was ripped from Lucifer's embrace; his joy and pain and care and want and passion and hate and need… all of it, the part of him that made the difference between living and surviving – his _soul_. His soul was gone. It had been left behind somewhere, like an abandoned hoody, torn and tattered and stained, lost along the road.

Now they were about to get it back, and he should feel relieved. Looking forward to it, maybe.

But… he wasn't.

He wanted to do it, mostly. In theory. But he didn't exactly care if they did it today. Or tonight. Or any time between now and the next, say, ten years or something. And while some part of him told him, repeatedly, that this was precisely why they should be doing it rather sooner than later, the other part of him, the other half of what served as some kind of replacement-soul for the time being, was telling him to leave. To get out, get away, not let them do _that_ to him.

And he was inclined to listen, to turn his back and stop them before they had a chance to start. That very urge was getting stronger by the minute, every time his brother looked at him with that mixture of hopeful anxiety and too-familiar doubt, every time Bobby dropped his gaze and went back to studying his books as soon as he looked over at him, every time Castiel seemed to look right through him, obviously feeling appalled by the lack of soul he could undoubtedly feel just as clearly as Sam himself could.

He didn't want his soul back.

Not true. He did. He wanted his soul back. He wanted that gapping, shrieking wound that had been throbbing inside him for a _year_ to finally be still. He wanted to…feel, again. The world was so…flat. Stale. Meaningless. Colors were only bright, never poignant. The sun was only hot, never warming. The stars were only there, never beautiful. The girls, the hunts, the killings…they were only distractions. There was no point to any of it.

So he wanted his soul back, with a desperation that felt like a low-grade fever, leaving him shaking just under his skin. He wanted it like he'd once wanted the blood, with a deep, physical _need_. He _wanted_ it. To be complete.

But at the same time, he didn't. If he had his soul back, it would matter. What had happened to him…_it_ would matter.

He would _feel _it.

And the part of him that was pure survival, the part that had kept him moving even after he should have stopped, the part that had kept him fighting after Jess, after Dad, that had not _quite_ failed even after Dean…

That part of him said he needed to run like fucking hell, because he did not _want_ any of this to matter.

Because if any of it did, all of it would.

And he wasn't sure he could survive that. There was only so much pain – emotional as well as physical - he could endure, and he was way past the point of where he wanted to find out _if_ he still could. He didn't want to because he didn't want to go back. He didn't want to be Sam Winchester again.

Being that particular person sucked; Sam Winchester was never enough, he was never good enough, never strong enough, never smart enough. He tried to do the best and always ended up doing the worst thing possible. He tried to learn from his mistakes and ended up doing them over and over again. He thought he had it all figured out and always missed the bigger picture. Putting himself in that cage had probably been the one thing he'd ever done right.

Or so he thought.

He remembered it all. He hadn't lied to Dean about that. He remembered the cage. He remembered _everything_…but it was a numb memory, as distant and bloodless as everything else in his life – and he figured remembering was probably easier when there were no feelings to go with it. Jumping into the cage was probably the one thing he'd ever done right.

Now it looked like he was going to have to pay for that, too.

Bobby had been drawing a complicated series of interconnecting circles on his library floor in chalk. Dean had stoked the fireplace. Castiel had arranged candles. Now, as Bobby finished, their eyes turned to him.

"You ready, Sam?"

Was he? Ready to go back? No way out? Be the same — well, not the same but at least a much closer version of his other self again? Could he do that again? See the looks his brother was giving him all the time and really _feel_ them? Hear the worry in Bobby's voice when they were talking about how some things would never be the same again and wince at the truth about that? Look at Castiel and think that angels definitely had at least one advantage over humans and that was their inability to experience emotions?

Did he want that?

The honest answer was no, he didn't. Never again.

He blinked.

And still…

It was human.

All of that, _the mess the pain the fear_…it was hard, facing the fear, when the pain looked so…horrible…. to remember that there were things like love and joy and serenity, too. There were reasons angels wanted to be human. Reasons that souls had value.

Value that was deeper than any pain. Joy that was more pure than any fear. Love that trumped everything.

That was what a soul offered. All he had to do was remember it. Hold on to it.

And step into the circles.

And ignore the fact that it felt a lot like falling into a cage.

*** *** ***  
the end  
(for now)


End file.
